The quest will see him consuming with Rabelaisian enthusiasm the region’s cheeses and quenelles and poulets en vessie, and playing bemused supplicant and interrogator to a cadre of beatified chefs, including - holiest of holies - Paul Bocuse himself. Moving himself, his wife and their two young boys to Lyon, Buford sets out, with characteristically self-deprecating humor, not merely to learn the techniques of French cuisine, but to understand its essence. “I know I am pregnant again when I find myself in the anchovy aisle, tracing my fingers along the tins,” she writes, and in that juxtaposition of destiny and canned fish is something that all of us, regardless of our reproductive history, implicitly understand. A teenage afternoon is perfumed with dreams of kissing Han Solo and thick slices of sourdough toast dripping with butter and homemade apricot jam a love of croissants becomes the dagger of an eating disorder in the hands of a dance instructor critical of her weight a love affair is admitted in the willingness to spend a week’s worth of food money on butternut squash and sage ravioli the fierceness of her love for a newborn is recognized in the appetite for ice cream that follows a difficult birth. In epigrammatic, nearly poetic diction, Grant, a ballet dancer turned pastry chef turned damn fine writer, reminds us of how transformative the junctures where food and life collide can be.

Culinary memoirs tend to follow templates - the life-altering bite the singed forearms at the hands of a tyrannical kitchen overlord - so to find one with a truly distinct perspective is thrilling. This is a wonderfully detailed and highly amusing book from the writer who once took an insider's look at English soccer hooligans in Among the Thugs Along the way, to his own surprise, Buford found that he had become a kitchen insider. Terrific culinary writing tracks Buford's successive passions for short ribs, polenta, tortellini and then the butcher's art, Italian-style, of pig and cow.

Buford's book starts smartly-he first met dynamic celebrity chef Mario Batali at a dinner party at his own home, where Batali sparkled until 3 a.m.-and continues at a fast clip as he conceives the notion of becoming Batali's 'kitchen slave.' Buford wanted to profile Batali for the New Yorkerīut also wanted to learn about cooking he would be a 'journalist-tourist' in the boot camp of a 'kitchen genius.' His subject became an obsession, and over the next three years, he investigated a rich menu of subjects: what makes a three-star restaurant work what it takes to be a TV food star the techniques and history of Italian cooking, not just from library research but also from repeated trips to Italy to visit Batali's relatives.

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